User blog:Deadcoder/Deadcoder's Reviews: Canine Conundrum
I forgot who requested this review and why they requested it. But I'm still going to review "Canine Conundrum." My scoring system is simple: 10 - 0 with 10 being amazing, and 0 being Melanie Tran's acting. My review is, as usual, based on the English dub. =The Review= Canine Conundrum starts off in the Digital Sea, with Yumi in a navskid, being chased by William. As per usual, Yumi is having issues with William, and Odd is being silly in a serious situation. A Shark shows up. This fight scene was tedious. Jeremie decides to abort the mission, since they're not even at the replika yet, and they've already burned too much energy. They arrive at the lab, and we get fake technobable from Odd. Like me, Jeremie wants to slap him, but doesn't. Ulrich and Odd arrive at their room, to find that Kiwi ripped up some things. The next day, Ulrich complains about Kiwi peeing like the room is a waterpark. Jeremie complains about Kiwi eating his books. "With odd saying that paper makes him sick." And Aelita complains that Kiwi constantly steals her stuff and buries it. She also adds that because of her having to find all of her things, and dig them up, the school gardener, Michael Rouiler, thinks that she is a nutcase. In fairness, he's right, making this an ArsonMurderJaywalking list. But they all have valid complaints, saying that Odd should be more responsible about Kiwi. Knowing that she's the only girl in the school he HASN'T ticked off by stealing her boyfriend, been a crappy boyfriend to, or ticked off in a miscellaneous way; Odd appeals to Yumi. Even she doesn't defend Kiwi, since he did something to her shoes the previous week. They agree to move him to the factory. Alone in the lab, Kiwi notices an activated tower. One of my readers is probably thinking things that even Code Lyoko couldn't get away with, having read that sentence. Since XANA has run out of ideas, he makes the "Leftovers from the back of the fridge Casserole" of plans, combining elements of "The Robots," "Attack of the Zombies," a brief attack from "X.A.N.A. Awakens," and some of the cooler stuff from later this season. He infects Kiwi 2, who has been shelved. Some of my readers are going to ask "Why aren't you saying that Jeremie deserves this attack for treating an innocent robot that way?" My answer is that Kiwi 2 isn't sentient, so my usual issues with the rights of AI and abnormally minded people don't really apply here. We see Yumi, Ulrich, Sissi, Hiroki, and Johnny in the Gym with Jim for the Pencak Silat class that the school offers, which only comes up when the plot or shipping demands. Since Sissi is present, we can determine that it's the former. BlahBlahBlah, Jim is an idiot, BlahBlahBlah, Yumi is passive-aggressive with Sissi, Sissi points it out, Sissi makes good point while being a flake; Johnny is only there for Yumi, Sissi for Ulrich. Milly and Tamiya show up for something that can only loosely be calle d a story. This might be the most one dimensional character piece EVER. They managed to get 8 of the major characters in one room, and have nothing interesting happen. MINUS ONE POINT FOR WASTED SCREENTIME! Meanwhile, Aelita and Jeremie are in the Rec Room, playing Reversi. Two of the characters are showcasing bad drag voice acting in the background, to my and Jeremie's irritation. In keeping with the theme of mediocrity, the Super-Scan finally picks up the tower on Jeremie's laptop. That tower has been active for at least 20 minutes by now! If I didn't know better, I'd say the tower scanning program is nothing more than another copy of Season 1 Aelita, which was also good for nothing except being lazy and looking for activated towers, poorly. We get another phone-tree scene, the only noteworthy part of which, is Odd having to turn around and go back to the Factory. At the same time, the students are practicing Pencak Silat, with some success and some failure. Yumi and Ulrich leave, but are caught by Kiwi 2, who can now clone himself. XANA HAS TRANSFORMED HIM INTO A ROBOTIC RABID RABBIT! WHAT SHALL WE EVER DO?! The next scene, where the robot attacks them, is more funny than scary. Why are you people so afraid of something that could be incapacitated with a single bolt? This could be seen as a mockery of France's pseudo-socialist government, or their own unawareness of their own horrible engineering. Probably the latter. The robots start reproducing so much that they start listening to the pope. Since this episode is all padding, Jeremie explains the attack to Odd, after hearing about it from Ulrich. All on screen. Jim makes a bad comment about Manga, ticking off Yumi, then asking if he's stupid. Honestly, you've just ticked off a girl who has made comments about committing domestic violence and you were in the last scene. Jim, you are so stupid, you should be a gym teacher. Oh wait. Due to what can best be called "Middle School Social Politics" everyone believes Yumi and Ulrich. Like most people who didn't write season 5, Hiroki knows that if you have a crappy plot, you are obligated to substitute for it with fanservice. He tries to create some by shipping Ulrich and Yumi. He fails, but gains plus one point for making an effort to salvage this episode. The characters try to avoid calling Jim fat. I don't know why they don't, given that they're going to need to use an RTTP for this anyway. CUE THE SEASON 2 VIRTUALIZATION MUSIC! Aelita and Odd arrive in the Desert Sector, while Yumi and Ulrich crawl through the air duct. In keeping with this episode's theme of not even trying, and there are no monsters on Lyoko. Since they're all idiots with no engineering abilities, the people who were in the Gym WHO WEREN'T SMART ENOUGH to leave via the airduct fight the robots with hand to hand weapons. Never mind that all they need to do is turn on that shower in the background, cower on the wooden benches, and plug sissi's headphones into an electrical outlet, dangling the stripped ends in the water, thus shocking all the robots to death. YOU'RE ALL IDIOTS WITH NO PROBLEM SOLVING ABILITIES! XANA concludes that the best way to destroy humanity is to let these people reproduce, and the robots leave to attack Yumi and Ulrich, the smart ones. On Lyoko, William finally shows up, devirtualizes the Overwing, and summons the token black manta. Since this episode has no real plot, fanservice must be used instead. So we get William and Odd fighting in VERY tight spandex, while Aelita makes inappropriate noises while she flies to do something to the tower. Meanwhile, XANA attacks Yumi in the sewer with robotic dogs, and she flees via her skateboard. Some Tarantulas finally shows up on Lyoko. As usual, they appear from behind the tower, no matter how implausible it may seem, since doing virtualization animation on these things would be too funny. Since Jeremie thinks Aelita is an unobservant moron, he points them out to her, as they shoot at her. Jim switches from idiot to responsible mode, and rescues Ulrich, while Sissi shows us a dark part of humanity. She shows us that even if somebody treats you like this script should be treated, it's still possible to love them. Since we still need filler, we get a phone call from Jim to Jeremie, explaining the plot so far, and Jeremie explaing it to Aelita and Odd. Yumi makes it to the factory, and we get gratuitous slow motion from Odd. What is this? Evolution? I guess it's repetitive enough. Since the drama demands it, Odd runs out of arrows. Yumi is unconsious in the elevator, and the robots that took her out, "wow yumi, a single nut can take these things out, yet you were taken out by two of them?" Jeremie runs from the robots, since like he is with everyone else, weaker than Yumi. Kiwi does the same. Unlike Jeremie, who is no longer sane in this season, Kiwi retreats to the higher ground of the factory interface, reloading Odd's arrows in the proccess. That was the second most contrived thing in this show. The most contrived being the entire plot of "Cruel Dilemma." On Lyoko, Odd is reloaded, and Aelita is still fighting William. Since William is smart enough to duck when Aelita shoots an energy field, Odd is devirtualized. She runs off, and we get the Aeltia Options! :0. Act suicidal and/or crazy. :1. Attack it with a long single note of angry music. :2. Have an argument with it. :3. Use Energy Fields. 3 clearly isn't working. 2 will be saved for when she has a word for the writer of this episode. That leaves 0 and 1. Hmm, can I combine these? Since french law enforcement is french, the police haven't arrived at the school yet, and they're all showing about as much resistance as you can expect from the french. Jim is the responsible one this minute, and they start to build an ineffective barricade. I said french and responsible, not smart. On Lyoko, we see Aelita use the single note of angry music, but don't see the effect. William actually listens for once, and finds her. I'm calling this plan both 0 and 1. She runs, and he dumps her in the digital sea. Aelita is dead again! Everyone do a shot! We get a doom scene in the factory and in the Gym. The former is depressing, the later justified. But wait! No Deus Ex Machina this episode! Aeltia is alive! She cloned herself! again! She runs into the tower, while William puts his sword in the tower. We get yet another just in time scene. This might be stupider than the one where a laser beam halted in midair. At least that was frightening. These things are about as intimidating as a mousetrap made by renault. They can be destroyed by a single nut, and the only thing they do is move at a slow speed and catch you in a jawhinge. We then get an RTTP. We later see Jeremie complement Aelita's duplication ability, while he probably thinks of some rule 34 applications for it. They decide to let Kiwi stay, while Odd covers for him with a halfassed excuse. Review Summary This episode had a very strong flavor of "we just didn't care." The attack was contrived, character moments lacking, and the action was pathetic. And it's obvious that the writers knew it was bad, because they killed Aelita again to make up for it. Overall rating: 1.5/10. This would have been 0, but it was marginally better than Amnesia. Furthermore, we got a little piece of Hiroki and Milly, providing an extremely rare piece of tertiary to secondary character interaction, where the secondary character wasn't Sissi, earning half a point. This episode was the cinematic equivalent to Dolly Parton: mostly filler and re-purposed material, with only a little bit of organic matter. Category:Blog posts Category:Canine Conundrum